For Sarah's birthday Colombia put on quite a show for us. It started with a quick visit from Ipiales to the Santuario de las Lajas, a spectacularly sited church in a narrow ravine a few kilometres away from town.
We knew it would be busy. It's a major tourism and pilgrimage site for Colombians, but still weren't quite prepared for the long, winding road down to the church, lined fully on both side with souvenir shops and restaurants. But despite the tourist focus and the crowds of Colombian tourists, it was well worth the visit. The church, built in 1958 on the site of a two centuries old shrine was pretty darned impressive.
Though that was only the first bit of a long and fabulous (birth)day. From Ipiales we travelled three hours north by bus to the city of Pasto. Given that it was the weekend of the region's biggest festival of the year we'd expected some trouble finding a room, but fully half of the hotels had space and we quickly found one with an adequate combination of low price and comfiness.
On our way up to Pasto we'd seen some of the neon coloured floats that are (one of) the highlights of the Carnival Blanco y Negro.
Originally a post-abolition celebration of unity, the highlights of the week long carnival are two days when the inhabitants of Pasto (not to mention heaps of visitors!) paint themselves and everyone around them first black and then white. Kind of like a monochrome version of the Hindu celebration of Holi.
We had missed out on the black day, but were in plenty of time for the white day parade, the very pinacle of the celebration. As we made our way into the city centre and even at the beginning saw kids spraying one another with white foam (from 750ml aerosol cans specifically branded for the event) and exchanging handfuls of white talcum powder.
At the parade route itself we enjoyed watching the floats from afar and got into the action ourselves, being lightly dosed with white by a few bystanders. We spent the next hour or so following the parade on a parallel route, ducking in to meet it now and then, eating some delicious cheesy arepas (basically thick corn and cheese pancakes) while the fun grew thicker around us.
At our final stop, near the parade's end, the views of the floats were great, Sarah got to.try on some of the participants’ costumes and we purchased several beers (also, inquired about, but decided against purchasing a bottle of rum or aguardiente). As the parade came to its climax people warned of of the mayhem to come. “People go crazy with the powder when the parade finishes,” they warned us.
Go crazy they did. The parade and floats had been great, but paled in comparison to the fun we had on the way home. Sarah and I wandered back home through busy streets and squares that were absolutely chocka. At each square we were searched by (very efficient and professional) police before joining the throngs listening to the salsa, rock and Colombian folk tunes from stages that seemed to grow larger and larger as we continued our walk.
On the way we also stopped to join the fiesta with a few crews of Colombians who bade us join them. With the most memorable of these Sarah and I danced salsa (respectively) with an uncle and niece from Bogota, I was throughly doused in foam by a four year old grand-niece and we had copious quantities of rum poured down our throats from a wineskin. It was all we could do to extract ourselves before the minimum twelve PM deadline our new friends set us for parting from their dancing throng.
Our final stop on the way home was in the biggest and wildest square of them all. We drank more beers, jammed to the tunes of the live bands, were thoroughly caked in talc, paid the extortionate NZ0.75 fees to use porta-loos, ate pancakes and sausages and arepas, paid the even more extortionate NZ6.00 fee to use an ATM, saw the sunset, and carried on dancing with the crowds until (not actually THAT) much later.
The whole experience was wild, manic, vibrant and entirely good spirited. Ourselves and our clothes were completely covered in talc and weren't fully rid of it until multiple washings later.
The next morning we joined a decidedly worse-for-wear crowd at the bus station as we drank (sweet, not that fabulous coffee), ate traditional Colombian breakfasts and bought tickets northbound to the city of Popayan, Colombia's second most renowned city of colonial history and known as Ciudad Blanco (White City).
We ended up staying just outside the old town, so I went out for a walk in the drizzle to check it out as afternoon turned to evening. I managed to find several fun displays of Christmas lights all over town, and had dinner with police officers and street cleaners at an impromptu restaurant run by two women out of a shopping cart. But when it came to finding something to take home to Sarah, absolutely every shop and restaurant seemed to have closed.
It was only by getting lost (and slightly nervous for my safety given the emptiness of the city) and walking home along a busy suburban street that I managed to locate Popayan businesses that stayed open past 19:00 on a Wednesday.
The next day Sarah was feeling a bit blah as a combined result of a cold, lingering effects of her wisdom tooth surgery and lingering post birthday party effects. So I headed on my own to market day in the town of Silvia, an hour's bus ride from Popayan.
Silvia is where everyone from the adjacent Guambiano indigenous villages comes once a week to trade and sell their wares. Traditional Guambiano clothing is very striking, combining a vivid indigo skirt with a black shawl, reversed to black three quarter length pants and an indigo vest for the men and topped off for both with a stylish narrow-brimmed black hat.
I wandered around the square outside and the market hall itself. The wares were generally standard day-to-day food and hardware with a few fun additions: big blocks of panela (dark, molassesy flavoured sugar), hats (of course), and bunches of obscure looking medicinal herbs and salves. Before heading back to Popayan I had a fabulous lunch of fried pork (basically super thick bacon), beans, salad, rice, soup and juice.
Our visit to Popayan concluded with (finally!) a nice daytime exploration of the city's old town. It included lots of wandering around the beautiful whitewashed buildings, a climb up a nearby hill to enjoy views out over the city's tiled rooftops and a wander through the absolutely lovely town hall, which consisted of four or five of the grander old courtyard homes amalgamated into one pretty (if slightly labyrinthine) complex. In the Popayan market
we had a spectacular late lunch of fish stew, which may even have eclipsed my previous day's in Silvia. It was slightly muddy tasting river fish, but seasoned fabulously, with one portion plus included sides being more than enough for two.
We concluded with a shopping trip for some bus snacks before heading to the station to wait out our final couple of hours before departing on an overnight journey to Medellin.
One very notable memory of the wait was the arepa vendor on a bicycle who seemed to be circling our location, his recorded sales pitch blaring “arepas de choclo! Arepas de choclo! Bien caliente, Arepas de choclo!”. Maybe you had to be there, but so irritating was it that I have scarcely ever been more relieved to be starting an overnight bus journey.
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